Gabe nodded his head toward the television, and I grinned at the subtle sign he wanted me to push play again. Already, we'd moved to nonverbal communication. I didn't want to read into it too much, but it was a good sign that he felt comfortable in my home.
The show followed a meerkat mob with our same matriarchy structure. It went into basics about meerkat family dynamics, but our similarities ended there. My family were meerkat shifters, which meant our human minds controlled our behavior most of the time.
A knock at the door signified the arrival of our food as the credits rolled on the first episode. I wriggled to my feet and grabbed the paper bags sitting on the rainbow welcome mat outside my door.
"Wow, food's here already?" Gabe called. "How long are these episodes?"
"An hour." I dropped the bags on the coffee table before him.
He blinked. "I've been watching some dude dramatize the lives of meerkats for an hour?"
"Yep."
"Wow. I can see why people love this show. It's addicting."
I handed him the remote while I gathered utensils and bottles of water for our meal. He surprised me by pausing it and helping me arrange the takeout containers on the coffee table. When I sat on the floor to eat, he did the same without questioning.
"I'm sorry I don't have TV trays," I said. "I usually sit in the papasan, and there's no comfortable way to eat there, so I prefer to sit on the floor."
"I don't even have a coffee table in my efficiency apartment. This is a million times better than getting crumbs in my bed."
I laughed at his honesty. "I don't have a spare room, or a desk, so when I work from home, I work in my bed. My coworkers tease me about crumbs all the time."
"No spare room?" He glanced around. "Still, this is nice. My building is so old, it's crumbling. Sometimes I worry a good rainstorm is going to send all the roof tiles crashing to the ground." He shrugged. "Can't compete with the location, though. It's only two blocks from the courthouse."
"My mom hates this place. She complains about everything from the tile to lack of water pressure and everything in between," I said. "She secretly wants me to move back home and build a house on the compound."
Gabe laughed. "Are you sure you're not in the mob?"
Before I could object to his well-timed joke, he pushed play on the show again. I sometimes felt physically sick when watching anything too graphic during a meal, but this episode, focused on a skirmish between two meerkat mobs, was pretty tame.
"Do you run?" he asked when the credits rolled at the end.
"Me? Not unless something's chasing me."
He pointed to the screen, now counting down before it would flip to episode three. "What about your meerkat?"
I laughed. "That's different. It doesn't feel like running. We don't walk in meerkat form. We're always scouting, foraging, or fleeing."
"Or attacking?" He pointed to the screen again. The first shot of the opening sequence showed a meerkat mob running at the camera like a stampede.
"Not so much," I said. "We're human, and we're the only meerkat family in our part of Northern California. If I had to guess, I doubt we've had a rivalry over land since we came to America three generations ago."
He sighed, and a flicker of disappointment crossed his expressive face.
I leaned over and pressed the pause button on the remote. "You want me to attack someone?"
He shrugged. "No one in particular." A pretty blush crept across his cheekbones. "It's just a fantasy."
"This I have to know." I wanted to know all my mate's fantasies, especially the ones that made him blush.
"It's silly, really." The color in his cheeks deepened. "I always thought my alpha would be the kind to fight for my honor."
I'd heard it before. Omegas wanted bigger and stronger alphas, and I didn't look the part. "I assure you, if anyone insulted you, I'd give them a piece of my mind." Before he could apologize, I added, "I'm down for role-play, if that's part of your fantasy."
He blinked. "Role-play?"
"I can talk a friend into insulting you at the wedding." I knew just the guy, too. Mild-mannered alpha shark by day, but slip Isiah fifty dollars, and he would start a commotion whenever and wherever we asked. He'd missed dinner at the restaurant, but he'd been a blast at the dance club afterward. Gabe had missed his antics while he and Becca were getting tattoos.
